This
Beech 'sapling' was collected from local woods in the
Winter of 2001. It was just one of a number that I collected
that Winter with the purpose of developing them into
bonsai.

The
tree was approximately a metre in height at the
time of collection and so, as is common practise
when developing trunks for bonsai, I chopped the
trunk down to the first branch to create a new trunkline.
In other words, I pruned back the main trunk so
that the thinner first branch would become the new
upper trunk.

One
of the main purposes of chopping in this manner
is that as the first branch is thinner than the
base of the trunk, the new trunkline would have
greater taper; a highly desirable quality in bonsai.
(For more details on developing trunks for bonsai,
please visit here)

At
this point in time, I intended to develop the tree
as quite a small bonsai; (approximately 12"/30cm)
and planted the newly collected tree into a small
cut-down nursery pot as can be seen above.

2003:
Two years later and the Beech had developed very
slowly. The transition between the original trunk
and new trunkline had become smoother and new
branches had appeared, but this development was
slow and I decided to plant the tree into the
ground where its growth would be far quicker and
therefore development into a bonsai could be sped
up (see Field
Growing For Bonsai).

June
2007: For four years while the tree was in the
ground, it was allowed to grow wild and would
then be pruned back hard to selected branches
during the Winter. As would be expected, trunk
and branch development was considerably faster.